You're All I Need (A Soap MacTavishOwn Character Story)
by rachel1005
Summary: Lola is just a normal girl. She is at the beginning of her second year studying medicine in London when tragedy strikes and her world is turned upside down. A chance meeting with a stranger leads her down a completely new and terrifying path where all is not fair in love and modern warfare.
1. Chapter 1: Mr & Mrs Jacobs

"Gower Street." I repeated. "You need to get off at Gower Street."

"And the bus leaves when?"

I sighed heavily.

"I've told you Dad."

"I know you have love, I just can't remember." he chuckled. "I'm an old man now."

He was 52. Hardly the age when his memory was starting to betray him.

"There's a bus that leaves from outside your hotel at half past nine." I put my phone onto loudspeaker and threw it onto my bed as I moved towards the mirror to examine my unruly bed head. "Which gives you fifteen minutes. Can you and mum manage that?"

"And we'll get to Bower Street just after 10?" he asked, simultaneously ignoring my question and forgetting the name of the street they needed to get to, despite me repeating it ten seconds ago.

"I don't know about Bower Street, but you'll certainly get to Gower Street if you get the number 30 bus in the next fifteen minutes."

"She's being cheeky again!" he shouted to my mum.

"She gets it from you" her voice floated through my room in a quick retort to my father and I smiled.

"We're leaving now." my dad said. I could tell that he was smiling too. "And we'll see you in half an hour bun."

I grinned at the nickname. "I thought you'd given up on that?"

"Well..." he sighed. "That was before you moved away and I didn't like you as much." he joked. "Now that I only see you once a month, it's easier to pretend that you're my favourite child."

"Very funny." I muttered. "Now, please go and get the bus. I have a busy day planned for you both and chasing you around London because you're both lost isn't on my list."

"Dower Street?" he asked.

"You know, if the whole police thing had never worked out, it must be good to know that you could have been setting the stage alight with your wit."

"Love you bun."

"I love you too Dad."

"You won't love me when you see that I've brought my man bag with me..."

"The man bag? Really...?"

"Only because I know how much you love it."

"Looking forward to it pops."

I walked back to the bed and hung up. There was a loud knock at my door, before Charlotte, my roommate, came tumbling into my room.

"What time is Tom getting here?" she grinned, flopping down on the bed next to me.

"You're not allowed to refer to my dad as Tom." I told her.

"Why?"

"Because he's Mr. Jacobs to you." I answered, dragging myself up from the bed and in the direction of the large pile of clothes I had dumped on the floor.

"I prefer calling him Mr. Jacobs." a male voice stated as its owner sauntered into my room. "Makes him sound like he's in charge of me."

Housemate number two. Steve. The gayest man I've ever met. A complete and utter sweetheart.

"Oh, door's open." I muttered sarcastically. "Not like I'm just here in my bra or anything."

"Darling, we've discussed this before..." he sighed, gracefully dropping down onto my bed next to Charlotte. "No matter how many times you pout those lips of yours in my direction, I'm never going to sleep with you."

I pouted at him as my hands found my favourite t-shirt cum vest top that Steve had "lovingly" customised for me when we had first moved in together during our first year of University. Originally a vintage grey Ramones t-shirt that my dad had bestowed upon me when on my thirteenth birthday after he had realised that I was the only one of his four offspring with any kind of taste in music, Steve had decided that sleeves were "out" and had taken to it with a pair of scissors, leaving me with a flimsy vest devoid of sleeves and almost all of my dignity. I turned my back to my captive audience and pulled my bra off through one of the armholes, which now stopped just past my ribs.

"Braless...?" Steve asked. "For an afternoon with those lovely countryfied parents of yours?" He raised his eyebrows at me. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." He smirked to himself.

"The Wizard of oz...? Really?"

"Judy is a Queen." he protested

"You're a Queen." I muttered

"Tom won't be pleased with the amount of side boob on display." Charlotte mused while chewing on her bottom lip. "I mean... I'm sure that the male population of London will be happy but..."

"Those without sin always cast the first stone." I muttered, turning to my mirror and attempting to subdue my mane of honey blonde hair. "And besides, it's not as if I've got a lot to flash, unlike some..." I raised my eyebrows at her in the mirror as I played with my hair.

"Leave it!" Steve shouted, dramatically. Did I mention he was gay? So gay that I honestly think that the word was invented just for him.

"But it looks like I've just rolled out of bed." I said, attempting to flatten the Something About Mary-esque quiff that I had going on.

"Exactly!" he sighed. "Have you learnt nothing from me?"

"I've learnt to always knock before I go into your room." I smirked.

"A sock on the doorknob is a universal code for 'I'm having hot, sweaty, dirty sex in here'" he protested.

"You're not in American Pie, Steve..."

"I've not had a sock on my doorknob for ages." Charlotte muttered.

"That's because you have incredibly unrealistic standards." I answered, spinning around to look at her. "Ryan Gosling? Really...?"

She pouted. "A girl can dream can't she?"

"At least dream about someone good like Matthew McConaughey" Steve scoffed. "OR GEORGE CLOONEY!"

I wrinkled my nose at him. "You're worse than she is." I pointed at Charlotte.

I picked a pair of black skinny jeans up off the floor and wriggled into them.

"So attractive." Steve commented, giving me a sarcastic thumbs up.

"Hey, I didn't exactly invite you to come and watch me get dressed." I buttoned my jeans and leant down to tie my converse.

"I can definitely see boob..." Charlotte shouted.

"Then maybe you should stop staring at my chest?"

"I've not had sex in three months." she said. "Right now I'll take any action I can get."

"Me and my boobs are glad to be of service" I answered, grabbing my phone and keys and throwing them into my bag.

"I wish I liked boobs..." Steve sighed. "But they just don't do anything for me."

"See, I like my own..." Charlotte began. "And I have a strange connection to Lola's, which, by the way, are definitely more than a nice handful..." she nodded her head at me. "But I don't like any others."

Both Steve and I looked at her and a small silence fell across my room.

"I'm going to leave before this conversation gets any weirder." I told them both. "Remind me to buy a lock for my door at some point."

"I have to leave too..." Steve said. "I have a date with that obviously gay barista in the Starbucks by Tavistock Square."

He followed me out into the hallway of our rented house, a beautiful Georgian terrace that was permanently flooded with light due to the enormous bay windows and white walls. Luckily, I had stumbled across two people with whom I shared an absolute, unwavering sense of style with and we had spent a small fortune finding the perfect décor for each room in the house. My favourite was the huge grey L shaped sofa that dominated our living room where we usually spent most of our evenings snuggled up together watching films.

"By date, do you mean you're going to go and sit in Starbucks with your textbooks in the vain hope that he's into medical students?"

"Hot medical students" he corrected me. I grinned at him and wrapped my arm around his broad shoulders.

"I don't think he's gay..." Charlotte said as she shut the front door behind us. "I think he's metrosexual."

I linked arms with her as we began the walk to Gower Street down our own leafy road. "I don't like men who look like they might steal my moisturiser. It's such a turnoff when a man takes longer to get ready than I do." she had a dreamy look in her eyes. "I like them rough and ready and able to throw down like a boss in the bedroom."

"And speaking of douchebags..." he elbowed me in the ribs pointedly.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Don't start Steve."

"How is the lovely Tristan?"

Tristan, my boyfriend of nearly ten months and general hate figure within our household due to his aristocratic background and private schoolboy related snobbery. In reality, Tristan was a one night stand that had gone horribly, horribly wrong, but as the duration of our relationship had increased so had his tolerance of all things middle class, and I was finding less reason to dislike him. Which everybody knows is the start point to the path of true love.

"He's fine." I answered tersely. "Away visiting his grandfather in Sandringham for the weekend. There's a shoot or something... I think Prince Harry is there." I thought about the gorgeous copper haired Prince with whom I had shared a drink during one of my first outings with Tristan. He had the most wonderful sparkle in his eye and had almost every girl in the room under his spell within minutes.

"Nothing says rough and ready like a man who shoots defenceless animals for fun!" Steve said sarcastically. I glared at him balefully.

"So he's found another excuse not to meet your parents then?" Charlotte asked.

"Remind me once again why I live with you both?" I asked. "Because sometimes I forget..."

"Okay!" Charlotte said gleefully as if this were her favourite thing of all time. "With the exception of Steve and I, nobody else in our class wanted to talk to you, let alone live with you!"

"That's not true..." I said, eyeing her warily.

"Yes it is!" Steve yelped, jumping to Charlotte's defence. "I know you don't always see it Lo, but you are rather scary to both sexes."

"Is scary really the best word?"

"YES!" they chorused in unison.

"The first day of University is when alliances are drawn, friends are made, and enemies are marked." Steve said. He was gesturing wildly with his hands. He was going to begin one of his speeches.

"Sometimes, I don't think you're dramatic enough..." I muttered sarcastically. "Tom Cruise will be out of a job soon enough."

"Do you know how many girls I saw wearing Autumn/Winter 2004 Prada on our first day?" he asked, ignoring my remark. "Twenty seven. Twenty seven girls wearing fresh off the runway couture simply so they could impress their peers."

"So?"

"Combine the couture with the hair, the nails, the make-up..." he trailed off. "And most of them looked passable at best." he laughed. "And then you stumble in.."

I stopped at looked at him with a bored expression. "Is this story going anywhere Tolkien?"

"All five foot ten of you, with your implausibly long legs, and your annoying flat stomach, and your masses of blonde hair."

"They're not that long..." I looked down at my legs, which did look quite long in my current choice of jean.

"And if that's not bad enough, you have that face!" he cried. "That exquisite face of yours with that bone structure that makes me want to cry, and those lips that made me wish for just a millisecond that I wasn't gay." He cupped my face in his hands and rubbed my cheeks with his thumbs.

"It is a really nice face." Charlotte conceded.

"And you were wearing leather trousers, a white vest and converse." Steve finished, pausing for dramatic effect. "And all those girls who had spent so long perfecting themselves for our first day immediately knew that they had no chance of competing with you and your pure genetic perfection." he laughed again. "And no matter how nice you were to them, they were never going to be your friend, because the only friends you will ever have in the world will be the gays, and other winners of the genetic lottery like Charlotte here."

"And aren't you glad that you found us?" Charlotte grinned, throwing her arm around me.

At five foot nine, with her jet black hair, green eyes and massive boobs, Charlotte was a completely different kind of "winner" in the genetic lottery that Steve had conjured up out of thin air.

"Well thanks for the confidence boost." I smiled. "But this doesn't explain why men are scared of me."

Steve rolled his eyes as if I were a moron. "Sometimes I wonder how you manage to do your own laces up in the morning, let alone study medicine" he tutted.

"Isn't it a bit obvious?" Charlotte asked.

I shook my head.

"You're gorgeous, smart and so nice that Mother Teresa looks like a school bully in comparison..." Steve said. "It's a terrifying trifecta that confuses the average man." he grinned. "You, darling girl, are a triple threat." he looked at me with a serious face. "Accept it, embrace it and give it a big old kiss on the cheek."

"You really are the gayest man that has ever roamed our fair planet." Charlotte murmured. "It's quite impressive really..."

She was cut off mid sentence as a deafening bang hurtled towards us. It was the kind of noise that reverberated around your brain for a few seconds after it had happened. The kind of noise that made your heart beat faster than you ever thought it possibly could.

"What the hell was that?" Steve asked. I had noticed that his fingers were clasped tightly around mine.

"It might have something to do with the work being done on the tube?" Charlotte said, her voice shaky.

We had left the leafy comfort of our road by this point and had found ourselves on a main road and in close proximity to the hustle and bustle of London.

"There's no work being done on the tube today..." Steve interjected.

Charlotte nodded. "That's what it said on the radio right before I came and stood outside your door so I could listen to Tom on the phone."

I rolled my eyes at her. "Mr. Jacobs! He's called..."

I stopped once again as my eyes settled on a large plume of smoke that had begun to filter into the air.

"That's Tavistock Square" Steve said as we all turned to face the smoke. "There's no tube station in Tavistock Square."

"Look at the people..." I muttered, as a crowd began rush away from whatever had caused the smoke.

From our close proximity to the Square I could easily pick out people running away from the scene of the explosion with bloodstained clothes, pain etched heavily onto their faces.

"We need to go and help." I said, looking towards the mass of people. "We might be able to do something!"

My heart was still thudding wildly against my chest but the fear that had appeared at the sound of the bang had been replaced by a rush of adrenalin that was pulsing through my veins at an alarming rate. I was the first to start running, Charlotte and Steve followed closely behind. As we neared the plume of black smoke I noticed more and more people emerging bloodstained from the Square.

"What happened?" I shouted towards a man dressed in cycling gear, he was staring dumbly at the scene before us.

The thick black smoke was billowing from the remnants of a double decker bus. Half the bus was gone, the thick iron of it's skeleton mangled and twisted from the blast. Bloodied victims had spilled out onto the pavement, some crying out in pain, others lifeless. Carnage enveloped my senses, screams rang through my ears and the images of broken bodies imprinted themselves into my mind. And then I saw it, the thing that was far worse than the sight and smell of burning flesh. I heard Steve shouting at me before he dropped my hand, he ran into the mayhem. I stared at the bus.

"Lola!" Charlotte appeared beside me, she was panting as if she'd just ran the 100m final at the olympics. "That man... he told me."

"It's the number 30." I stared at the neon letters. "It's their bus." I croaked. "My parents..."

"They probably missed it! You know what they're like!" she was doing her best to put my mind at ease, but in her haste to quell my fears because she, unlike I had failed to notice the bus driver stumbling from the wreckage. He had his arms wrapped tightly around a small black leather messenger bag that he held in front of his mouth in a vain attempt to prevent the smoke from entering his lungs. I recognised it immediately.

It was my dads.


	2. Chapter 2: Pink Mist

Pink mist.

Pink mist.

Pink mist.

The two words rattled around my brain, cluttering around my already overwhelmingly saturated thoughts, before settling themselves behind my eyes, where they sat, taunting me.

The first time I had heard those two words had been a month following the now infamous terrorism attacks on London in which my parents had been two of the victims. I had been sat in the Ministry of Defence building in Westminster opposite a man called Sir Stuart Peach. He had been unable to look me in the eye and had twisted his thick gold wedding band around his sausage finger with such a relentless energy that I had been surprised it hadn't fallen off.

"Pink mist?" I had repeated.

He nodded and straightened his tie up.

"Pardon my untrained civilian knowledge but -"

"Miss Jacobs..."

"Lola." I strained. "Please just call me Lola."

His face had turned a strange beetroot colour. I had stressed that he was not to call me Miss Jacobs. It was something that I had learnt in Medical School. You addressed the relatives of the deceased by their surname, not their forename. You had to address them with enough warmth and kindness as possible whilst remaining completely detached from the situation. I knew how it was. I was just another grieving relative to him. I didn't matter.

"Miss Jacobs..." He sighed deeply and knit his fingers and placed them under his chin.

I sighed and blinked at the furious tears appearing in my eyes. The colour of the blush on face quickly spread up to the tips of his ears.

"Your parents, Mr and Mrs Jacobs -"

"Tom and Hazel." I interrupted. "My parents Tom and Hazel."

He finally met my eye. I set my jaw and stared back at him. He had to acknowledge them. Had to acknowledge me. I wouldn't let myself, or better yet my parents, become nameless statistics of this horrible crime. The furious twisting of the wedding band continued.

"We know that your parents were on the bus. Tom and Hazel got on the bus. Eye witness accounts place them in front of the bomber. There was nothing left."

I finally understood pink mist.

I thought back to my wonderful, amazing parents. My dad, twirling my mum around the kitchen while she tried to wash up, swooping down to kiss her while she giggled. A regular occurrence. My older brothers, the triplets, George, William and Archie had gagged and protested at the affection my parents had bestowed upon one another, but I had sat wide eyed, smiling. They had been so in love.

"Lola?"

When I was younger, I had never given much thought to the idea of there being five stages of grief but you learn about it in medical school and you learn that it has a very official sounding title, The Kubler-Ross Model. I was sure I had already experienced the first three stages. Denial, anger and bargaining. I had spent the first week following their deaths believing that my parents were still alive, and had spent an hour typing an email to my dad detailing the exact places that we would visit during their next visit to London. I had sent the email and Steve had found me seven hours later, passed out in the bath, an empty bottle of vodka at my side and a tattoo scrawled onto the flesh that ran parallel to my right collarbone. A simple phrase that belonged to my mum and dad's wedding song. "How strange it is to be anything at all." I had stared at the tattoo in the mirror for half an hour before I had launched, rather loudly, into the second stage of the Kubler-Ross Model. Anger. I had smashed most of the valuables in my room by the time Steve and Charlotte had managed to restrain me. I am not ashamed to admit that I had spent much of this phase blind drunk and crying. Stage three, bargaining, had happened all of a sudden, when I had, in a rare moment of sobriety, overheard a news report that had stated that the bombings may have been avoided had MI5 responded to a tip off they had received. This had led me to Sir Stuart Peach. And after several calls and emails in which I had begged him to tell me of any intelligence that could have prevented the death of my parents, he had called me into his office. He had sworn on the life of his children and his wife that the attacks had come as a surprise. I believed him. I could no longer bargain with myself that this could have been avoided.

"They shouldn't have been there." I whimpered, blinking furiously at the tears lining my lower eyelids.

Sir Stuart Peach looked awkward.

"I had asked them to come up to meet my now ex-boyfriend but he decided that he would rather go shooting..." I was mumbling to myself. "I had told them I would come to them instead but they couldn't get a refund on their hotel."

"Lola..."

"My parents are dead. And it's my fault for listening to Tristan." I gulped as a sob rose from my chest. "He had made out that he was so excited to meet them."

Sir Stuart Peach finally stood up and turned to face the large window that was situated behind his desk. Ahead of him, the Thames was sparkling with early morning sun and tourists were milling about, cameras poised expectantly in their hands.

"Oh.." I gasped as the tears finally fell down my cheeks.

In two short strides, Sir Stuart Peach was stood in front of me, he knelt down to my eye level and placed his large hands on my shoulders.

"This is not your fault." his voice was gruff and firm. "None of this is your fault."

"I miss them." I sobbed. "They were my people."

The idea that of having "people" had come from a conversation I'd had with Steve after a night out. He had looked me in the eyes and held my hand and explained that he thought that Charlotte and I were his "people". I had asked him what he had meant and he had explained that your people were those that you knew would fight your corner for you no matter what. The people that you loved unconditionally. I had decided that besides Steve and Charlotte, with whom I shared an unshakeable bond with, my parents were my people. The four of them were all I needed. Their passing had left a hole that I was sure would never be filled.

Charlotte, Steve and I had organised a small wake for my parents at the local pub in Beaconsfield where our family home was situated. My parents had been popular in the village. My dad, a police officer was a well known presence and my mum was the headteacher at the local grammar school for girls. Over 900 people had turned up to pay their respects. My brothers had been noticeably absent, due to their various locations across the world. The last I knew, William was now based in Singapore working as an investment banker, Archie was living in Dubai and George, the oldest and my least favourite, was in LA. He had recently married after a whirlwind romance with an 18 year old blonde with enormous fake boobs. The triplets had been distant since my parents had died, and the only time I had heard from them was to confirm that we were to meet with the family lawyer within the next three weeks for the reading of my parents will. George wanted to claim his pound of flesh as quickly as he could and then depart back to his flash LA life that involved his new, younger glamourous wife, Shay, and his job as an entertainments lawyer.

I hadn't been close to my brothers for the longest time. They were two years older than me and had acted, to a certain point, as my protectors whilst we grew up but when I had turned thirteen and been on the receiving end of my first period, our relationship had changed irreversibly. We had all inherited the best of our parents, the three were practically dopplegangers for the love child of James Dean and Marlon Brando and wouldn't look out of place in an Abercrombie and Fitch advert. I, on the other hand, had spent most of my pre-teens trapped within an awkward, gangly body topped with a mop of frizzy hair. Until I had been thrust into the arms of puberty and had emerged much better off than I had started. We grew up in a large, but very communal village, and I had attracted a lot of attention in my post puberty years. My brothers, George in particular, had grown tired of their friends commenting on my new found boobs and eventually just decided it was best to leave me to fight my own battles.

After the wake, Charlotte, Steve and I had gone to my family home, a gorgeous converted farm house, with 2.5 acres of land. I had cried as we had walked through the front door. The house had been untouched. My mum and dad had no siblings and both sets of grandparents had passed away. For as long as I could remember it had been the six of us. I had cried until my throat hurt and slept in my old bed with Steve and Charlotte wrapped around me.

Sir Stuart Peach was still looking at me. I gulped as deep sobs emerged from my chest. Without warning, his hands had moved, wrapping themselves around my shoulders. He was hugging me. A real hug. I thought of all the hugs that I had received since my parents had gone. My dad gave them best hugs. He was strong and he would all but squeeze the life from within you. Sir Stuart Peach had a very similar hug to my dad. I collapsed into him, sobs coming thick and fast, tears staining the olive green uniform he was wearing.

I was officially in the fourth stage.

Depression.


	3. Chapter 3: Acceptance

Depression is a word that gets thrown around far too easily.

"Oh, my favourite tv programme has just finished... I'm sooo depressed."

Or,

"He hasn't called, or texted me. I'm so depressed."

It's so easy to simply take yourself off to your local GP and claim that you're always miserable, and you can't sleep, and you've maybe entertained the idea of taking your own life once or twice and boom, you're given a prescription for anti-depressives, signed off from work for six weeks and officially labelled as being depressed.

Real depression is nothing like that.

When you suffer from real depression, the overwhelming darkness of your situation hovers over you like an intimidating fog. One day quietly slips into the next and before you know it, you haven't left your bed for two weeks. You don't cry anymore. Because there is nothing left to cry. All the moisture within your body has vanished, and although you feel like you need to cry, nothing comes out. You are simply existing from one day to the next.

I had never entertained the thought that I would ever face depression. Nothing about my life seemed to suggest I would. I had a wonderful relationship with my parents, had been brought up in a beautiful village and afforded a solid education that had culminated in my acceptance into UCL to study Medicine and I had my best friends, two people with whom I was completely and utterly besotted with. Superficially, I knew I had nothing to complain about. I had inherited my mothers thick honey blonde hair, my fathers piercing green eyes and high cheekbones and their combined metabolisms, that meant my stomach remained flat and my limbs long and elegant without much effort in a gym. Which isn't to say that I didn't exercise. I ran ten miles a day, seven days a week. I also rode a bike to and from my lectures which were situated about 8 miles away from our home.

But that's the thing about depression. It doesn't announce itself. It flies under the radar for as long as possible, leeching on to your every thought. It conjures up nightmares while you sleep and forces you to relive your worst moments. It whispers in your ear about your friends. It reminds you that neither of them have ever experienced anything like this. It laughs when they tell you that they, "know what you're going through", it makes you hate the people that you love the most even though they are trying their best to help you through the immeasurable pain but nothing, and nobody can help.

But here's the other thing about depression. It gets bored. It leaves you alone sometimes. Lifts the black cloud of hatred and sadness from your shoulders and lets you breathe. And those are the moments in which you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you will beat depression. You know that you are meant to be more than this. More than a shivering wreck of a human. You have things to accomplish, relationships to fix, a legacy to uphold and you force yourself out of bed. You stand and look at yourself in the mirror. You see the damage that depression has done. You look at the hollow circles beneath your eyes, the grey pallor of your skin, the sharp, pointy bones protruding from your hips. You realise that you can count your ribs. You know that you're sick. You know that depression isn't your friend. You look at the scrawl that is tattooed underneath your prominent collarbone and for the first time in a fortnight, since you dragged yourself home from meeting Sir Stuart Peach, you feel something other than a complete helplessness. Hope scoops you up in its arms and holds you tight. It strokes your hair and tells you that you will get through this. You will persevere. Your room is a disaster. It looks, ironically, like a bomb has hit it. Still, you pull on your running leggings, sports bra and the first top you can put your hands on. It's the Ramones vest.

I had never really entertained the people who believed that everything happened for a reason, or those who believed that the cosmos sent signs. But I knew that this was a sign. It was the biggest sign that I would ever receive.

Charlotte and Steve looked up at me wide eyed when I appeared in the doorway of the living room.

"You're going running?" Steve asked.

I strode into the living room and enveloped them in my arms.

"I'm sorry." I said. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Hey.." Charlotte said, pulling away from me and cupping my face in her hands. "You don't have to apologise for anything."

I looked into her deep green eyes and knew that she was telling me the truth. She kissed me on the forehead.

"If I was straight I would suggest we move this to the bedroom..."

It felt good to laugh. Really good. Like I had just learnt to walk all over again.

"So... you're back then?" Steve asked.

"Trying to be." I nodded, and pushed myself to my feet, before turning towards the door.

"Want some company?" Charlotte asked.

I held up my Iphone and my earbuds.

"We'll do dinner when you get home then." Steve said. "You're looking too thin. You need carbs. Lots of carbs."

I closed the living room door behind me and headed down the hall to the front door. Opening it, I was greeted with one of those beautiful September evenings where the sky looks like a Monet painting. Swirls of orange, pink and red filled the sky and the smell of Autumn hit me like a brick wall.

I didn't know what acceptance, the final stage of grief, was supposed to feel like, but as I closed my front door and set off down the familiar leafy street with The Ramones blasting in my ears, I knew that I was finally there.


	4. Chapter 4: Sexless Marriage

I had always been a heavy sleeper. When I was younger my mum and dad had said there wasn't a single space that I couldn't make comfortable for myself. My favourite? The footrest in the family car. Handy for a family that had four children, two adults and only five seats to transport them from A to B. My parents had eventually bought a bigger car and I eventually stopped sleeping in strange places but my ability to sleep through anything was unchallenged. Throughout the past couple of months, I had slept more hours than I ever thought I would need to. Mainly due to an unhealthy level of intoxication during the first couple of weeks without my parents. My record was now at a very scary 47 hours. Have you ever known anybody who slept for that long? The strange thing was that I had gone to bed twelve hours after waking up and had slept for another 10.

Following particularly traumatic surgeries, heart transplants, brain surgery and so on and so forth, patients are commonly placed into induced comas for 48 hours. This, or so the theory goes, allows the body to regenerate and heal. The only possible explanation for my recent sleep pattern had to be the same. I was healing. And I was subconsciously aware that in my dreams, I was free to see my parents as much as I desired, whilst in reality, I would never see them again.

But last night had been different. I had tossed, turned, beat my pillows in frustration, tried to read a book, tried to watch a film, had several hot drinks whilst in a scaldingly hot bath, but, eventually, at 5am, had resigned myself to my alertness, and gone out for a run. I always loved running in the morning. Especially in September. The weather had been particularly good the past couple of days. Warm, sunny days that seemed to stretch on and on. Cloudless skies during the day that turned a pinky/orange at dusk and dawn. I'm not going to be as cliché as to declare that this kind of morning made me feel lucky to be alive. But it did. My feet were pounding the pavement beneath me when my phone, currently blasting Kings of Leon into my ears began to buzz against my hip. Stopping to catch my breath, I pulled the phone from my pocket and stared at the screen.

**Just a reminder that we are meeting today with Uncle Peter today at 3pm. If you don't turn up again we will assume that you aren't interested in your inheritance and your share will be divided between the three of us. **

The reason for my disastrous lack of sleep hit me like a sledgehammer.

I typed out an angry reply to my charming oldest brother.

**Dear darling brother,**

**I will of course, be attending. Can't get between you and your pound of flesh any longer can I? Looking forward to seeing you and your lovely child bride. Shall I bring champagne to toast with? Love and kisses, L xxx**

I growled in frustration and jammed my phone back into the pocket on my running leggings. The man was completely insufferable. My running changed almost instantaneously and the happy, warm feelings that had been coursing around my blood suddenly disappeared.

I had cancelled three meetings with the family lawyer already and was more than aware that I was skating on very thin ice with my three elder brothers. I knew that Will and Archie were probably not as bothered as George, but all three of them had made it quite clear that I was postponing the inevitable and they were getting tired of it. Plus, they were less than impressed by the amount of airmiles they had amassed between them. But it really wasn't my fault that they chose to live so far away from London and Uncle Peter's office.

I wasn't even sure why my presence was completely necessary. I had rang Uncle Peter, the family lawyer - not really my uncle, but my dad's best friend from way back when who had handled almost every legal aspect of our lives since birth, including an unfortunate incident with George and his possession of Class A narcotics – and begged him to just have the reading of the will without me.

"They would have wanted you to be there." he told me. "There's a couple of things that they had asked me to explain to the four of you in person."

"Can I send somebody who looks like me?" I asked, throwing myself down on my bed and burying my face in my pillows. "Like, a really, really good impersonator?"

He had chuckled loudly. "One of you is bad enough."

"Okay, I'll be there." I sighed. "But I can't promise that I'll be nice to my brothers. Especially after they didn't bother showing up for wake we held."

"That's fair enough." I could hear the smile in his voice. "You realise that I have to be nice to them though?"

"I guess..." I flopped onto my back. "I don't even really care about my inheritance you know. It doesn't replace them."

"I know, but your parents had a lot of capital between them, plus they owned the house outright." he sighed. "I'm not saying it will ever replace them but there's a lot of things that you can do with your portion of the will."

"Fine..." I mumbled. "I'll be there."

I shook the memory from my head as I ran up the five steps that led to my front door. Turning my key in the lock, I pushed the door open. Silence. I looked at my watch. 7:15am. Far too early for Steve and Charlotte to have risen from their pits, especially as we hadn't started back at University yet and had nowhere to be. I kicked my running shoes off and padded towards the living room. Morning light was streaming through the large georgian windows and the room was illuminated. I skipped gently over the solid oak floor and threw myself elegantly onto the couch.

I thought about my brothers. I wondered how my parents would feel about the deterioration of our relationship. William and Archie had always been very secular. William had spent his teenage years with his head in a book. He was a maths prodigy. He had graduated from Oxford a year early and had been snapped up by an investment banking company based in Singapore and Archie was a complete gym freak and was only capable of having a conversation if it was based entirely upon the amount of fibre and protein he needed to consume to maintain his, admittedly, impressive physique. He was now based in Dubai. He worked in "security". We didn't ask questions. George had always been the triplet with whom I had the most in common. We enjoyed the same films and were very outgoing and sociable. Before I had grown boobs and he had decided to disown me, George had been my best friend and the person whom I could confide in about anything. My phone buzzed against my hip.

"**You've wasted enough of my time already. We are getting this sorted today even if I have to drag you to Uncle Peters office by your hair myself. You need to grow up."**

Oh, my lovely older brother. Such a way with words.

"**I think that Archie is probably more equipped for dragging people around by their hair. LA has made you podgy."**

"**I'm being serious Lola. Make sure you are there."**

I growled.

"**I'm being serious too, George. Carbs are not your friend. Especially carbs coated in cheese and bacon."**

"**Fuck you."**

"**Now who needs to grow up?"**

I watched my phone. It remained ominously silent. I would pay for that later. I opened up the music application and searched through the new songs that Steve had downloaded for me. Gays always had the best music taste. I pressed play when I came to "Dare" by Gorillaz and turned the volume up to the maximum that it would go. Have you ever heard this song? It's one of those weirdly infectious, catchy numbers that makes you dance even if you don't want to. I sat quietly, picking a strand of cotton that had come loose from the couch. I was going to dance. I had to. The nervous energy coursing around my body was finding its way into my feet.

"Fine...!" I grumbled to myself. "Let's just get this over with."

I started to move. I hadn't danced in such a long time. I was one of those really terrible dancers with flailing limbs. I was 5ft10. Dancing was a hazard when you were 5ft10. But still, I danced. I threw myself around. I shook my hips and flicked my hair and generally span around in very questionable circles. But I was smiling. One of those big stupid goofy grins that you reserve for really important pictures that everybody was going to see. My last high school picture was a disaster. I looked like I had dropped about thirty E's and I was having the time of my life. Regardless of what Steve and Charlotte seemed to think about me and my bone structure, I looked positively crazed when I smiled. I was still dancing. Smiling and dancing. I was also jumping around. I hadn't felt this happy in months. I was halfway through a particularly overzealous hip thrust when I caught sight of my audience. I stopped instantly. Steve and Charlotte were watching me. They looked horrified. I pulled a headphone out and stared at them.

"Yes?" I asked. "Can I help you?"

They both continued to stare.

"Well if that's all I think -"

"What song are you listening to?" Steve asked, an eyebrow raised.

I can't believe I was being judged by a man wearing Spongebob Squarepants pyjamas.

"None of your business." I replied, quickly.

"Your limbs do very strange things when you dance." Charlotte said. "They don't look like they're attached to your body."

"That's what I want them to look like." I retorted.

Steve entered the room first. He grabbed the phone from my hand. Charlotte appeared at my side. She squeezed my hand.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked. "Because you look mentally deranged."

"Yeah, well, you have messy hair."

She narrowed her eyes at me. Steve yanked the remaining earbud from my ear and took my phone over to the system we had set up in the corner of the living room. We had installed it under the impression that we would have house parties every weekend and would need something to play music from. We had, so far, hosted one party. Three people had been sick on our brand new sofa and we had caught another two having really questionable sex in Steve's bed and it dawned on the three of us pretty quickly that we loved our little house too much to invite strange people into it. Plus, we were medical students. We weren't really afforded the luxury of time to party.

"I have to meet with the triplets today to sort out the will." I told Charlotte, while Steve hummed to himself, his fingers furiously searching through my music collection. "George has been texting me this morning."

Charlotte straightened up. I saw something flash behind her eyes. It was only there for a moment but it was there.

"That's today?" Her eyes flickered to Steve, who glanced at her briefly. Something passed wordlessly between them.

I looked back and forth at my two best friends. There was something they weren't telling me.

"What's -"

I was cut off by Steve who shouted triumphantly. He fixed my phone up to the system with a flourish.

"Baby girl.." He grinned and walked towards me. His and Charlotte's moment was gone. "If you're going to dance alone, you at least need to dance to something good."

He was grinning wildly. The opening bars of the song boomed through the living room. I grinned.

"Oh Steve, I knew I entered a sexless marriage with you for a reason." I jumped up and wrapped my arms around him, kissing him sloppily on the cheek.

It was The Pussycat Dolls. Everybody knew the song. It had been dominating the radio and the clubs for weeks now. It was ridiculously catchy, and the video had six unbelievably smoking hot girls gyrating around Busta Rhymes.

"Char..." Steve looked at her. I saw a look flash between them and within seconds she was up and jumping around.

And we danced. We laughed at each other and did the kind of ridiculous moves that you can only do with your best friends and we danced some more. And I momentarily forgot about meeting with my brothers to hear the last will and testament of our parents. I also forgot about the looks that had passed between Steve and Charlotte and tried to shrug off the overwhelming feeling that there was something that my best friends weren't telling me.


	5. Chapter 5: Martha Stewart

I had left the dance-a-thon shortly after Steve had decided to play "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. He would swear blind that she is the second coming of Christ but I am far more dubious about her and not about to spend my time gyrating around my living room to any of her songs. It's her face. There's something about it that I just can't like.

I excused myself quickly just before he had started shrieking the lyrics and headed up to my room for a shower. The meeting with the triplets was firmly back on my mind and I'm not sure showing up in my running gear, sweaty from a morning of dancing would impress anybody. Not that I was trying to impress, but still, I was sure George's child bride would be in tow and I didn't want her thinking I had turned into a sweating disaster. I had to project a strong, fierce front. Strong didn't equal sweaty.

I stood under the shower for longer than normal. Besides the idea of coming face to face with my darling brothers, my brain was repeating the image of Charlotte's horrified face. She had looked worried when I had reminded her that today was the day I was meeting with my siblings.

Charlotte was one of those girls who didn't worry about anything. She had no need to. She would breeze through life. Besides the fact that she was a 5ft9 bombshell that made men fall to their knees, she was by far the most intelligent person that I had ever met. She had a photographic memory and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. By the end of our first time she had already memorised the latin names of every single bone in the body and at the end of our first year she had easily breezed to top of the class without so much as breaking a sweat or one of her perfectly manicured nails. But she had definitely looked worried. I had also seen the look that had passed between her and Steve. It had been infinitesimal but it had been there.

I rinsed the last of the conditioner out of my hair and stepped out of the shower. Entering my room, Steve had written a note in eyeliner on my mirror.

**Pancakes a la Steve at 10:30. Be there or be a carb-less loser. **

I grinned and wiped the note off before sitting on the floor. It was already 10:20 and there was a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. I towelled off my hair and quickly blasted it with my hairdryer. I tied it up in a messy top-knot and threw on a pair of denim shorts and a striped t-shirt. A quick slick of mascara and I was downstairs. My belly rumbled appreciatively of the smell. Upon entering the kitchen I was greeted with a breakfast table that would put a 5* hotel to shame. Pancakes piled so high that they resembled the leaning tower of Pisa, a colourful array of fruit fresh from the market at the end of the road, crispy bacon and a jug of syrup that gleamed invitingly. I was in heaven.

"I know I've lost a couple of pounds Steve but this is a bit over the top." I picked up a strawberry and bit into it. "Even for you."

I grinned at him. He was stood behind Charlotte, his hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder. She was pale. My stomach dropped.

"What is it?" I asked, rounding on her. "Char..."

She looked up at me. Her lower lash line was brimming with tears.

"Charlotte has something that she needs to tell you." Steve said. He squeezed her shoulder. "So let's all sit down and -"

"I'm so sorry Lo."

She was crying. My Charlotte. The girl who DIDN'T cry. Seriously. She was as tough as nails. When we had first met she had told me that she didn't cry and I had laughed at her. Everybody cries. She had shook her gorgeous raven haired head and stared at me. "Not me."

I had vowed to break her. I had tried every trick in the book. Sad films, sad songs, sad books... Nothing. She was superhuman. We had also managed to stumble upon an old couple feeding the ducks in the park. "He loves the ducks." the old woman had told us. "He proposed to me here over fifty years ago." He had been diagnosed with early on-set dementia and no longer recognised his loved ones. But she took him to feed the ducks every day. I was inconsolable. I had cried the type of tears that you usually reserved for the times when you were alone. You know the ones. The ones where your face contorts into really horrendous shapes and goes all blotchy and red. Ugly tears, my dad used to call them. I had cried ugly tears in the park and Charlotte had stood there, completely immovable. Better yet, she had started discussing treatment options that the wife could explore. She was unshakable. A rock in my river of ugly tears. But here she was, sat in our beautiful kitchen, ugly tears streaming down her cheeks. Her normally perfect pale complexion, streaked with red, blotchy marks.

"Good job on the plan, Char..." Steve muttered, scooping her up and depositing her in a chair directly in front of his buffet.

"What the hell is going on?"

He pushed me into a chair. "Sit." he ordered. "AND EAT THIS BREAKFAST THAT I HAVE SLAVED OVER."

I stared at him. He was prone to dramatic outbursts. I cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Christ, Betty Crocker. Keep your bloomers on."

He glared at me. And then he laughed. Charlotte gave a loud sniff and a small giggle came from her mouth.

"Okay." he bit into a pancake. "Charlotte has something to tell you."

"Uh, no shit Sherlock." I grinned and spooned a large helping of strawberries onto my pancake, which was already covered in bacon. I covered it in syrup. Steve was watching me.

"You know what they say Lo.." He laughed. "A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips."

I scooped up a large mouthful of delicious breakfast goodness and grinned at him. "So worth it."

Charlotte hiccuped.

"You okay?" Steve looked at her.

She nodded. She had already eaten three pancakes. She was a stress eater.

"I have something to tell you." She looked at me and spoke through a mouthful of food. "And I just want you to know that I love you." She swallowed and looked at Steve who nodded at her.

"I didn't want to have to do this today because I know you're meeting with your brothers and this just has to be done today..."

"OH GOD." I shouted. "Did you sleep with one of my brothers?!"

She looked horror stricken. Her big green eyes stared at me wildly.

"NO!"

"Please God at least say that it wasn't George!" I stood up.

Steve was laughing.

"Lo!" Charlotte stood up and stared at me. "I didn't sleep with one of your brothers! Sit down!"

I stared at her, and quietly sat back in my chair. She sat down too. We stared at each other in silence. She started laughing.

"You really think I'd sleep with one of your brothers?!" she laughed.

I started laughing too.

"I mean, I would..." She grinned.

"So would I." Steve said. "Especially Archie." He fanned his face dramatically. "I know he's evil and we hate him but -"

"- Stop." I looked at him. "Stop now."

He shrugged.

"So what's up Char?" I looked at her. "What's so bad that you're crying and stress eating?"

She inhaled deeply and looked to Steve, who took her hand in his and squeezed it tightly. He nodded.

"Somebody tell me what the hell - "

"I'm dropping out of Uni."

I stared at her.

"What?"

She took a mouthful of pancake and chewed it thoughtfully.

"Sometime today, Char..."

"I've been thinking about other options." she said, swallowing the mass of pancakes and fruit that had been in her mouth. "Other options besides this."

I shook my head. "What other options do we have?!" I asked her, incredulously. "This is everything."

She looked at me, her eyes wide.

"Look, I haven't wanted to say anything." she mumbled. "You've been living through your own personal hell and I just wanted to be there for you in the way that a best friend should be."

"You're not just my best friend, Char..." I stood up and walked around to her. I sat down next to her and took her hands in mine. "You two are my family now." My throat burned and my eyes quickly filled with tears. "You and Aunt Bessie over there."

"Oh ha ha." Steve said. "That's hilarious." he glared at me.

"Steve and I went out one night." She swallowed. "You had gotten drunk again and had passed out cold..."

"So we paid Mrs Oates from next door to keep an eye on you." Steve grinned at me. "She was so happy."

Mrs Oates was our elderly neighbour who was simply delighted that she lived next door to a gay man. "All of the ladies think it's very interesting that I have a gay neighbour..." she had told us. "They tell me that the gays are the best people to live next door to." she had linked her arm through Steve's. "Apparently you're all very good at shopping."

I stared at Steve. "When you say pay..."

He smirked. "I took her shopping."

I laughed.

"Okay, so you left me under the watch of Steve's fag hag..." I looked back at Charlotte. "And the two of you went out."

She nodded. "I'm sorry, it's just we had been taking care of you constantly and you were in your smashy phase and I just needed to get out of the house and have a drink -"

"- or twelve." Steve mumbled under his breath.

"Shut it, Martha Stewart." I hissed.

He pouted at me.

"And I got talking to this really nice guy." she took a deep breath. "He had just come back from Iraq where he'd been serving with the military for 12 months..." She looked into my eyes. "And he started telling me all these stories about his friends who had died out there."

"Cheerful." I remarked.

"And it struck me that there's so much more that I could be doing with my life." she squeezed my hands. "So he put me in contact with recruitment for the medical corps."

My mouth fell open.

"I was emailing back and forth with him and eventually he invited me to meet up with him." she stared at me. "I took a couple of tests and passed with flying colours."

"So.."

"I'm enlisting." she gulped. "Today."

I felt sick. I stared at my friend. My wonderful, beautiful friend. My heart ached. I wanted to tell her not to go. I wanted to slap her. I wanted to cuddle her and tell her that I loved her and how my wounds weren't healed yet. I wanted to tell her that I needed her now more than ever. But the words wouldn't come out.

"Men and women are literally volunteering their bodies to this awful, awful war." she was looking at me, her big green eyes shining with determination. "I want to help them." She tightened her grip on my hands. "I want to feel like I'm here for something."

Steve was stood behind me. He draped his arms around my shoulders and bent down to kiss me on the cheek.

"I've tried to tell her not to go, but she's not interested." he whispered into my ear. "You know Charlotte... Once she has an idea in her head it's hard to get rid of it."

"Those people out there are fighting to protect us from the people who killed your parents, Lo." Charlotte sighed, loudly. "I just have this feeling that I was supposed to do this."

I nodded and gulped as a fresh wave of emotion swept over me.

"I love you." I told her. "I love the very bones of you." I reached up and wrapped my arms around her tightly. "If this is your calling then I'm here for you."

She visibly sagged in my arms. "Thank you." I heard a small sob. "I haven't wanted to tell you. You've been doing so well."

"I'm a terrible friend for not being there for you."

She shook her head fiercely. "Don't you dare say that." she pulled away from me and held my face in her hands. "I was waiting for you to get better. I told Steve that I wouldn't enlist unless I knew you were going to be okay. I needed to know that I wasn't leaving while you were still broken."

I thought back to the days I had spent in bed. Those horrible, long days that had all merged together under a blanket of sorrow and confusion.

"I knew you were okay when you went for your first run." she smiled at me. "But watching you dance this morning..." she shook her head and laughed. "That was all I needed."

"I would use the term 'dancing' very loosely." Steve said.

"Oh shut up Judgey McJudgerson." I hissed.

I smiled at him and he kissed me on the cheek.

"Okay, so you have your meeting with the triplets at 3?" Charlotte pulled out her diary. "I have until 9pm to go and enlist so that means you can come with me afterwards?"

I nodded at her. "Where?"

"There's a recruitment event being held at the Royal Air Force Museum."

"I'll be there." I leaned towards her and wrapped her in a hug. "I'm proud of you." I nuzzled my face in her hair. "You maniac."

She wiped at her eyes and I grinned. "I knew I'd see you cry one day."

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was exactly midday. I had to get ready and head across to my Uncle Peter's office which was based in Kensington.

"Is nobody going to mention how great breakfast was?!" Steve looked at us both. "NOBODY?!"

I shrugged.

"I hate you both."

"Oh, you'll miss me when I'm gone." Charlotte said, rushing to him and wrapping her arms around his stomach.

"Hey, Steve..." I called as I left the kitchen to head to my room.

"Yes?"

"Maybe we can get Mrs Oates to move in once Char goes?"

"Don't even joke."

I grinned.

"I'd wake up and she'd be sat by my bed watching me sleep."

"And you're saying that's weird?" I shouted. "I wish you'd told me earlier!"

"HATE YOU."

"You can pick my outfit for today?"

"LOVE YOU."


End file.
